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T-shirt retailers using homophobia to make money
Thanks to Chicago Sun-Times columnist and film critic Richard Roeper, a very ugly practice has come to light. T-shirt companies trying to make a buck off of the cross town rivalry between the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs baseball teams have resorted to homophobia and racism to stimulate sales. The Chicago White Sox won a World Series and a championship parade while the Chicago Cubs haven't and "only" had a gay parade. Can you guess which is good and which is bad? Roeper recently attended a White Sox game where he frequently saw the above t-shirt (as well as a version sold as a bumper sticker) worn by White Sox fans. Said Roeper:
The comments on the Sun-Times site run the gamut from those who get the blatant homophobia to those who tell Roeper to lighten up to those who insist the word "gay" has nothing to do with gay people. It just means lame, dumb or stupid. If you don't understand that, you're just gay.
Given that the above shirt clearly shows two men together under a rainbow flag, I'm not sure how folks can honestly make the claim that the word gay has nothing to do with actually being gay, but they do. People are pretty great about rationalizing their behavior after all. Perhaps they'd understand the issue better if we went around using their actual names as a putdown for a week. "I hate my boss. He's so Tony." That red, purple and mango dress is soooo Hank!" Of course, as GLSEN has so admirably made clear, the use of the word "gay" to mean anything other than gay people (or if you're English or over eighty "happy") is inexcusable and shouldn't be tolerated by anyone. At least one organization is urging folks to get in touch with the retailers to encourage them to stop selling the shirts. AfterElton.com has contacted both retailers requesting comment, but has yet to hear back. I suspect it's going to take more than just some angry gay folks getting in touch to make a difference. Perhaps the Cubs and White Sox could team up to denounce sales of the shirts and fans who wear them to games. Submitted by on Mon, 2009-07-06 07:50. |
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wait, what??
I don't know anything about baseball, but if i read all that correctly....
Chicago cubs lost and that somehow means they are "gay" aka lame?
that right? i read that right?
divided Chicago
I don't know anything about baseball, but if i read all that correctly....
Chicago cubs lost and that somehow means they are "gay" aka lame?
that right? i read that right?
No, I don't think so...
I think it's more a Chicago think. Sox park is in the very blue collar white/African American south side. The team's fans tend to be union worker types.
Cubs park is on the north side, near the lake, much higher rent, whiter, yuppy zone. It's also right on the edge of Boy's Town, the big Chicago gayborhood (at least, until all the young trendy gays have been priced out...). Several year ago the city actually installed (really ugly) permanent pride symbols on Halstead, about a block east of the park.
Chicago is a VERY segregated city. It's a great city in many ways, but it really is more tossed salad than melting pot, if you know what I mean. The two baseball teams are a strong proxy for a lot of the division. You can tell a lot about a person by which team they identify with. The comment those T's are making is that Cubs fans (and the team, really) are sissy gays, and the Sox are tough men.
In the context of Chicago (a city I love!), the only thing that's surprising about this is that it didn't happen sooner.
Hey, I love the Pride Columns in Boystown
fair enough
To each his own on the rainbow pillar-things. (I do think it's great that the city honored the community in a public way, but I also wonder about the wisdom of putting in permanent structures in a neighborhood that will, like all neighborhoods, change.)
But the point is... Wrigley is on the edge of BT; Comiskey (all I will ever call it, other than Sox Park) is in the blue collar/African American south side. I personally think that's at the root of the T-shirts. The cross-town fans competition is a deeply-rooted cultural thing. And, unfortunately (especially since, if I were to like baseball at all, the Chi Sox are my team!), we are the butt of some ugly humor that works pretty well as shorthand for the "us vs. them" nature of this particular culture clash. I mean, it actually really does illustrate well, I think, the nature of the two teams' fans and aesthetics. (Except that the folks from the wealthy northern suburbs who tend overwhelmingly to be Cubs fans and, well, suburban republicans, would not like it one bit.) The drag of it is that in this illustration, we are shorthand for "Cubs (the faggy team) suck."
A funny thing about the rest of the state... you go south an hour or two and the rivalry becomes Cubs vs. Cards. Sox fall out of it almost entirely. I wonder what some a-hole will come up with to make us the butt of a joke illustrating that competition....
WTF?
I also do not follow baseball (or sports in general really) so this has me completely stunned. What in the world possesed them to think this was a good idea and think that we would just let it slide? 'Gay' has nothing to do with actually being homosexual...what?!
I must admit that I like the fact that the word gay also means happy but they never use the word in that way, which is actually in the dictionary.
Thanks for the heads up on this! I think this definately needs bringing down, im fed up of using the word gay as an insult or to mean somethings lame (or sucks?) and I know of people who use it all the time in an offhand manner and don't seem to even realise that what they are saying IS actually offensive.
My tonuge would catch your tongue...were the world mine :-)
Context is everything.
Cubs/Sox shirt
I think we should also petition for all the jerks who wore these shirts as sox fans to donate them to gay Cubs fans. A new message: "Love is more important than sports, BITCH."
This is in such horrible taste. Like the others said, it barely makes sense. Its such a stretch that it makes the people who wear them seem like even bigger assholes because they pushed so hard for such a tasteless, confusing joke.
SIGH >:(
"To make a bad day worse, spend it wishing for the impossible." - Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes
Hypocritical much?
Sorry Marie
I didn't mean that to be demeaning to women at all, I guess I should have thought that through more. But I don't really think of tht word as connected to women, especially since its rarely used in a positive light. I wasn't dissing women, I was dissing the jerks who wore that shirt. But if there are women that take it as personal offense, I'll remember that for the future. I certainly didn't know that was the case and am very sorry to have offended you.
"To make a bad day worse, spend it wishing for the impossible." - Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes
That shirt is soooo...
....hetero! Can that be a new thing? I guess not, that's equally offensive, huh?
It took me 3 or 4 times looking at that shirt to even get what it was trying to say. It's offensive, but not even clever about it which for some reason makes it even more offensive to me.
Roeper's other point, about online poker sites and people using gay slurs happened to me this weekend. I was playing Uno on Facebook (which can be addicting) and someone called me a name, although it was in Spanish and I didn't know what he had called me until the game was over, and I googled it. It wasn't nice.
Huh
Rats, foiled again!
They've found us out! All Cubs fans are
not sosecretly gay! I would have gotten away with it if not for those mettlesome Sox fans.Real mature. Then again, they are Sox fans.
The Cubs will win a World Series even if it takes another hundred years. Blind umpires aside.
Curiouser and Curiouser
Boystown
Both sites say they are unaffiliated with either team. No
Sox Parade
Please God, let a former (or current) Sox player come out
That might help shut up some of these troglodytes.
Gay Sox Fan here
I've seen plenty of these t-shirts sold around the park (when they used to allow it). Another one of the most common ones my friend and I saw was "Wrigley Field - Biggest Gay Bar in the World". While you could take that as offensive or not based on the context. When the t-shirt is being sold at the Sox park, the implication is obvious.
It hurts me as a Sox fan cause a lot of the fans are really nice people with a huge passion for the game of baseball. They don't just want to go to the game to get drunk, but actually WATCH and SUPPORT their team. Most don't give a damn about the Cubs. I dont.
Sir, them's fighten
Sir, them's fighten words. I do declare you are fit to be whipped. *Can't keep a straight face*
Ah, nice to know there are some good Sox fans out there. I only have one question, who put the curse on the Cubs? I know someone on your side had to have done it. They weren't this bad last year.
Homophobia in baseball
This reminded me of an article I read last week about fans of the Washington National's sending friendly beer-searching Red Sox fans to a gay bar as a prank. The articles writer clearly still thinks it is the 1970's...
"Of course, there's a proud tradition of straight folks in D.C. heading to Remington's for some red-hot spurs-and-chaps filled hetero line-dancing, but your typical dude wearing a Green Monstah t-shirt (?) under his Pedroia jersey might not be in the mood."
With his wink-wink "look at them queers" dismissave article, Dan Steinberg needs to grow up or shut up. Probably both. I won't even begin to go into the ignorance of most of those who commented on the story.
Never been a baseball fan, but since it is "America's Game" and a family activity I feel these types of things shouldn't be tolerated and especially not made as a joke.
Disgusting
What I always tell people who say they aren't using the word "gay" to mean gay people, just as an insult: it doesn't matter what your intent was, the phrase is still offensive to people, so stop using it!
I'm not afraid to call people out on this, I do it to my brother, cousins and co-workers, and if I ever saw someone wearing that shirt I would do the same.
You know what might work? if Cubs fans started wearing the shirts, while making it obvious they are Cubs fans, thereby equating gayness with their favourite team.
You too can be saved by the blog! www.savedbytheblog14.blogspot.com
I may be straight, but I'm not narrow.
Anyone Else?
It's Not Only on the South Side
These type of shirts are not confined to the South Side.
I find it very odd that outside Wrigley Field, only a couple blocks from the city's most renown gay strip, the one with the rainbow pylons on the sidewalks, there are t-shirt hawkers selling shirts that say things like 'cardinals fans take it in the pujols' and 'brewers fans suck on sausages.' Homophobia isn't merely a south side/sox fan thing.
I also applaud the open-mindedness of those who say 'what do you expect from sox fans?' etc. Nice, real nice.
At least the 'cubs parade' rainbow shirts don't use graphic language and imagery like those that are sold outside wrigley and worn by cubs 'fans' do.
BTW, my boyfriend and I are white sox fans not because we are blue collar or working class or whatever other stereotypes you may have -- we're sox fans because, well, people go to sox games to see baseball, unlike those who go to wrigley field, who go just to be at wrigley, which is, if you've been there, pretty much a big beer garden filled with trixies and vince vaughn wannabes.